


Settle Down (It'll All Be Clear)

by vipertooths



Series: Magicians: Q/El [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Getting Together, M/M, POV Alternating, Self-Discovery, Time Travel, True Love, its both bc time travel 0:-)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-27 09:16:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18192659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vipertooths/pseuds/vipertooths
Summary: Eliot and Margo are still giggling over the trials, the sun shining down around them, worries a world away, when it happens.Itbeing the fucking vortex that opens up right next to them and spits two bodies out onto the ground.(Otherwise known as the one where established relationship queliot ends up time traveling back to season one.)





	Settle Down (It'll All Be Clear)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for the overwhelming encouragement on Tumblr toward this idea! I am obsessed with time travel and I wish this could have been longer, but I have other stuff to work on and didn't want to leave everyone hanging too long. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it! Lemme know!!

**ELIOT**

Eliot and Margo are still giggling over the trials, the sun shining down around them, worries a world away, when it happens.

 _It_ being the fucking vortex that opens up right next to them and spits two bodies out onto the ground.

They jump, pressing into each other on instinct, but the bodies don't move. He shares a look with Margo before they stand and walk the few feet over to inspect the hopefully-not-dead people with their faces smushed into the grass and dirt. And he doesn't want to accept this, he really doesn't. It can't be what it looks like, because it _looks like_ him and—he pushes over the other one with his foot—Quentin.

Margo's grip on his arm loosens. "What the _fuck_?"

"Uh," is all he can muster up in response. Because really, _what the fuck_.

"What was that?" Alice asks from what must be the front door, but he can't stop staring at his own face. His hair is longer than he's ever worn it and are those _bags_ under his eyes?

He's snapped out of his little moment of horror as the doppelgangers' hands and feet snap together. A binding spell.

"Help me bring them inside," Alice says, so he slides his arms under not-Quentin's arms and begins dragging him toward the door because it's somehow less weird than carrying his own. Alice and Margo haul in not-him and Margo threatens everyone but Quentin into leaving not just the room, but the entire cottage.

"Closed until further notice!" she says as she slams the door in a confused Todd's face and spells it locked. She turns to the rest of them with a face like someone should already be explaining this to her. "Well? I doubt El and Q have some long lost twin brothers they never knew about, so does anyone else have something relevant to say?"

Alice is crouched down and examining them while Quentin is still staring from his spot against the wall. "Could it be the Beast?" he asks.

"The Beast?" she repeats. "You think he sent in yours and Eliot's unconscious lookalikes to terrorize us?"

"I don't know."

She tucks the shards of colored glass into her pocket after a moment. "They're not glamouring themselves."

"So that's really them," Eliot says, and she nods.

"That's their real appearance. Whatever that means. We'll have to wake them up to find out." She reaches down and smacks not-Quentin (maybe-Quentin? sort-of-Quentin?) in the face and yanks herself back as he gasps and attempts to flail while his limbs are bound.

His first instinct is to call out Eliot's name and he settles slightly when he looks over and sees his Eliot beside him. And then he notices Alice hovering over him and he stares at her for a long, silent moment before his eyes travel over everyone else in the room. "Oh, fuck." He thunks his head back down on the floor and winces.

"Are you from another timeline?" Alice asks, and not-Quentin only glances at her from the corner of his eye before staring back at the ceiling.

"Yes. Can you unbind us now?"

She considers it, tilting her head to the side like he's an interesting science experiment. "How could we know you're not dangerous?"

"You'd have to trust me, I guess." He sighs and mutters something about goddesses. "We were put in a loop to defeat the Beast. I'm from Timeline 40."

"Have you killed him?"

He glances at her again. "He's dead."

"Tell us how to beat him and I'll let you go."

"Gladly."

She releases their bonds and he sits up slowly, like he doesn't want to startle anyone. He looks at them all again, studies them, and looks sad. Not a surprising reaction, if he's dealt with the Beast, because that probably means he's also dealt with casualties. Eliot's surprised not to be among them.

There's a soft groan from Timeline 40 Eliot as he begins to stir. He reaches out an arm before his eyes are fully open, murmuring a soft, "Q?"

"Yeah." Timeline 40 Quentin—gods, there has _got_ to be a better way to refer to these people—helps him sit up and he rubs the back of his head.

"Ow," he croaks.

"I may have bumped his head bringing him in," Margo says, catching his attention. He looks up and his gaze quickly shunts to the side, at Eliot standing next to her, and then around the room, eyes wide. "Either I've finally lost my mind or I'm staring at our own baby faces right now."

"You haven't lost your mind. We're in another timeline."

"What the _fuck_ , Julia?"

Quentin finally moves away from the wall, coming up behind Alice and staring down at them. "Julia?"

Other-Eliot looks up at him with a look so fond that Eliot can only imagine it being directed at Margo, but he guesses that killing the Beast must really bring them together. He ponders, for a moment, that maybe their Margo is dead, and quickly yanks his thoughts away from that avenue.

"Q, why _are_ we staring at our baby faces?"

Other-Quentin looks confused and mildly worried. "Because we're in a— Oh. _Oh._ Really? _Again?_ "

"Again what?" Alice asks, eyes darting between them. She really can't stand knowing that someone has more information than her on something.

"This isn't another timeline," other-Quentin says. "Well, I guess it is now. Uh. What I mean is that this might be our _past_. We've had run-ins with other timelines and they run parallel. We wouldn't be this young."

"You're saying that timeline hopping is a _normal_ thing for you guys?"

Eliot sees the litany of questions building up behind the surface and decides to cut in before this turns into a four hour geek session about magical theory and application. He's _so_ not prepared for that right now. "On the off chance that you're wrong, we should make sure." He's not exactly sure where to start with that, but his counterpart apparently is.

"Okay, raise of hands if you've slept with Quentin yet."

Eliot's eyebrows twitch up in interest and Quentin looks supremely uncomfortable as everyone's eyes fall to him. Other-Quentin hisses at his Eliot that he can't just say things like that.

"Why not? They're defining markers in the timeline."

"And you couldn't think of any other defining markers?"

"Why are you complaining? This was quick. Look: no one raised their hand." He pauses and tries to fight down a smile. "Oh my god, no one raised their hand. This really _is_ baby you."

"Hold on," Margo says, hands on her hips. "You're telling me that _all_ of us have slept with Quentin?"

Other-Eliot nods and Margo looks grudgingly impressed.

"Maybe you're more interesting than I gave you credit for, Coldwater."

"Can we stop talking about my sex life now?" he asks, folding his arms across his chest.

Other-Eliot looks pensive before asking to the room at large, "If we're timeline 40, would that make them 41 or 40.2?"

Other-Quentin frowns. "Wouldn't the two of us who died on the life quest be 40.2?"

"So they're 40.3?"

Margo rolls her eyes so hard that it probably hurts. That's valid. Timeline 40 them are kind of obnoxious. They do come to a decision though.

"Okay, for clarification sake, we'll be Quentin and Eliot 40 and you guys will be 41."

"For fucks sake," Margo says, rubbing her temples. "I'm too sober for this."

 

**ELIOT**

After Margo walked from the room, they all took the opportunity to do whatever else was needed before re-converging to talk. Now, Eliot 40 and Quentin 40 are sitting on a couch instead of the floor, Alice has a binder in her hand to take notes with, and Penny, Kady, and Julia have joined them.

Everyone stayed mostly quiet while they explained the basics and then began focusing on specific paths. Julia interrupted once to ask about them messing up the timeline by sharing this and Quentin said they couldn't _not_ help themselves if given the chance, especially considering the monumental fucked-up-ness that has happened in Timeline 40.

Eliot tries to pay attention to everything, he does, but there's something about Quentin 40 and Eliot 40 that's bothering him, and Alice is writing everything down anyway. It takes him a while to figure out just what it is that's setting off an alarm in his head, but he gets there. It's a conglomeration of things: the hand Eliot 40 rested on Q 40's leg fifteen minutes ago and hasn't moved, the way they're leaning into each other, how often they communicate with only looks, the soft expression Eliot 40 gets when Q 40 starts rambling.

"Holy shit, you're _still_ fucking."

Every head in the room turns to him and he thinks he maybe said that while someone else was in the middle of talking.

It's Penny who responds, wearing the face he usually reserves for Quentin's brand of fuckery. " _What_?"

Eliot remembers that he wasn't there for the whole hand-raising bit. (Or not-hand-raising bit, as it were.) He directs his focus to the couch where Q 40 is giving Eliot 40 a _look_.

"Well, it _is_ me," Eliot 40 says. "Of course it'd be obvious to myself. I know me best, after all."

"It wasn't obvious to _me_ ," Q 40 argues. " _Him_. It wasn't obvious to Quentin 41."

"It's you, Q. You're not the most observant at the best of times." Eliot 40 pats his knee in a patronizing way, but the look on his face is genuinely affectionate.

"I resent that," Q 40 says, but doesn't disagree. He sinks back into the couch, pouting a bit, so Eliot 40 grabs his chin and pulls him close enough to kiss his temple. It's all very soft and sweet and fucking _bizarre_ , because it's one thing to do that with Margo. He's not fucking Margo. And he doesn't do that with people he's just fucking. Which means they must be in an actual relationship.

"This is so goddamn weird," he says, and the rest of the room seems to agree.

"You've got some real funny taste," Penny says at the same time that Julia says, "Makes sense, I guess."

"It _does_?" Quentin asks her, but he can't seem to take his eyes off the 40s.

“I hardly think this is the most pressing matter to be talking about,” Alice says, her voice tightly controlled. “I have some questions about a few points you mentioned.”

“Of course you do,” Eliot 40 says, “but we’ve been at this for three hours now and if we keep letting you ask every question that comes into your head, we will be here until next year.”

“How did you get here at all?” Julia asks. She still seems a little shell-shocked from the _you turn into a goddess_ bit. It’s valid.

Q 40 raises his eyebrows at her. “You did. Though I don’t think you meant to.”

“Why are you so cool with this right now? You’re stuck in the past. Shouldn’t you be panicking?”

Eliot 40 chuckles. “For once nothing is attacking us or planning on attacking us in the future, which means they will all be working toward getting us back.”

“And you trust them,” Julia says slowly. “You trust _us_ to figure out how to bring you back from the past.”

“We’ve had a lot of trust building exercises. I say we give them a few days before we start working ourselves up.”

Q 40 stands up and yawns. “We need to go see Fogg. If anyone shows up here looking for us—”

“We’ll point them your way,” Margo says. She’s been abnormally quiet for awhile now. It’s not that she hasn’t been talking; she just hasn’t been talking _as much._  That's cause for concern where Margo is concerned.

He pulls her aside as the room begins to disperse. “Trouble in the wood, Bambi?”

“The wood’s a little crowded,” she answers, and the confusion must show on his face because she sighs and tucks herself into his side. “I’m used to it being us against the world, El.”

Ah. So that’s the problem. “And you’re worried now that you see that _us_ has a few more people in it.”

“Is that stupid?”

He rests his chin on the top of her head. “You don’t think it would be nice to have more people to depend on? We can barely stand anyone, Margo. I think it’s pretty miraculous that we’ll have actual friends.”

She chuckles and sniffs. “That’s true, I guess. Promise it won’t get in the way of us.”

“I’ve only got one Bambi,” he says. “No matter what.”

 

**QUENTIN**

The Beast is Martin.

Plover is a horrible excuse for a human.

He’s dating Eliot.

Quentin groans and hides his face in his arms. He’s been focusing more on the last part than anything else, because it seems like something he might be able to deal with right now. It’s not something horrible. It’s mostly just confusing.

Does he find Eliot attractive?

That’s a dumb question; _everyone_ finds Eliot attractive.

But how far does the attraction go? He imagines kissing him, and it’s not a _bad_ thought. It’s a little strange, but he thinks that’s because it’s Eliot rather than because it’s a guy. Maybe he really _is_ as unobservant as Eliot 40 said, if he had to have a future version of himself pop back in time to make him realize he is less straight than assumed.

Maybe the most surprising thing isn’t _himself_ , but Eliot. Eliot 40, for all that he’s the same, is so different. They’ve been in the past for two days now and nobody can deny how in love he is with Quentin 40 and vice versa. It’s the weirdest thing, to watch himself from the outside like that.

He isn’t even sure why he’s thinking about this at all because he likes Alice. He _wants_ Alice.

Someone knocks and he lifts his head up so he doesn’t look _as_ pathetic before calling them in. It’s Quentin 40. He closes the door behind him and sits on the bed.

“I know if I leave here without talking to you about this, you’re just going to go for Alice anyway. Don’t get that look. I’m _you_ , I know how you think.”

“Just because things didn’t work out for you and your Alice—” he starts, and he knows it’s a weak argument before Quentin 40 interrupts him because he’s looking his future in the eye.

“I loved Alice. But it was never going to work. We never dealt with our problems, not really, not properly. We never came out stronger on the other side, only more and more broken. On a fundamental level, we just don’t work.”

“And you and Eliot do?”

Quentin 40 smiles. “Yeah, we do. And maybe that’s hard for you to see right now, but I think you will someday.”

“This is so god damned weird,” he says softly. “Getting relationship advice from the future.”

That makes Quentin 40 laugh for some reason.

“What? Is this not weird for you?”

“If you’d dealt with even half of what I have, you’d know that this isn’t even in the top twenty. It’s more like an unplanned vacation, really.”

He wonders how many things he’ll miss out—for better or worse—that Quentin 40 has experienced, armed with the knowledge they have. They’ll probably still fuck things up in different ways, but he hopes he can at least avoid some of the worst things.

“I can’t make you choose Eliot,” Quentin 40 says after a pause. “And I don’t know how this will change things for you, because even the bad things— _especially_ the bad things—changed me as a person, things you’ll probably never live through now. But we couldn’t just _let_ the terrible things happen.”

“Quentiiin.”

They both turn their heads toward the door, but he knows that it’s Eliot 40. There’s something different about his voice or maybe his tone that sets him apart from his younger self.

“That’s me,” Quentin 40 says, giving a final, parting smile before leaving as swiftly as he’d come.

 

**QUENTIN**

The 40s are gone by the end of the week. Penny and Julia show up to collect them and _they’re_ a couple too, which is way fucking weirder than him and Eliot, but that Penny is from another timeline, apparently.

Quentin decides that night that he just wants to block it all out for a bit and so ends up trying to drown his mind out with alcohol. Eliot finds and joins him by the time he’s pleasantly buzzed, grabbing the bottle out of his hand and taking a long drink.

“You’ve got the right idea, Coldwater.”

They pass the bottle back and forth until it’s empty but Quentin’s brain still won’t shut up. The thing is, there’s no anxiety attached to his thoughts anymore. Eliot is grinning and carefree as ever and Quentin wonders again what it would be like to kiss him. Then he wonders what’s stopping him from finding out.

 

**ELIOT**

Quentin is kissing him.

He can’t say he hadn’t thought about it, well before the time travel debacle. From the first time he’d set eyes on Quentin, he thought that he was cute, wondered how he might fall into bed with him later on. But Q is more than just a pretty face. He _cares_ about things, and he cares about Eliot. Not like future him cares, but he does. Because he’s Quentin.

Eliot 40 said they were soulmates, said Quentin was ready to raze the earth once to bring him back. Eliot 40 also told him to get his shit together and stop trying to fill the hole in his chest with booze and drugs and sex. Eliot 40 would be very disappointed in him right now. But that’s something for future him to worry about.

He chuckles into the kiss at the thought and Quentin pulls away with a dopey look on his face, with his half smile and drooping eyelids.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing. Everything.” He shakes his head and pulls Quentin back in by the back of the neck and slots their mouths together.

Quentin slides a hand into his hair, pressing in like they can’t be close enough. He can’t help groaning and pushing back until Quentin is on the floor beneath him. There was one thing Eliot 40 said to him before he left. _He likes this spot._ Eliot 40 ran a finger over a strip of his throat as he said it, a smirk on his lips.

Eliot makes sure to put the information up to very good use.

 

**QUENTIN**

He wakes up naked with a sheet curled between his legs and Eliot’s soft puffs of breath on his face. He waits for the panic to set in, but it doesn’t come. In fact, he feels more secure with this decision than he has with any he’s made since the first day he showed up at Brakebills. He knows him and Eliot work, he’s seen it. And who gets that kind of proof of concept?

 

**ELIOT**

Sex has always been a means to an end for Eliot, but this feels different. Maybe it’s all the ideas the 40s have been putting in his head for the past week, but this—

Quentin gives him a sheepish smile, tucking the sheet up around his waist from a sense of modesty Eliot hasn’t felt since he was 13.

“Morning.”

— _this_ feels like a beginning.

 

**Author's Note:**

> as always you can send me prompts for small fics / ficlets on my tumblr [vipertooth](vipertooth.tumblr.com/)
> 
> kudos and comments appreciated!


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